Ceremonies remember veterans whose remains were unclaimed
Sometimes they arrive in a cardboard box, sent by a funeral director who has become the closest thing to family.
Sometimes they arrive in a cardboard box, sent by a funeral director who has become the closest thing to family.
The mortician packs up the cremated remains of honorably discharged veterans and mails them to Washington Crossing National Cemetery in Bucks County. There, one day each month, dozens of people gather, call out the veterans' names, and give them a proper burial.
The attendees aren't relatives of the deceased, or even acquaintances. That's the point of the Service for the Unattended.
"Nobody leaves alone," said Marge Weiner, president of the volunteer group that organizes the monthly observance honoring veterans who had a funeral that no one attended - or never had a service, because no one claimed their remains.
"They are all worthy of the honor," the Rev. Peter Gregory of Chalfont, a retired Navy commander and chaplain, said as he presided at the September service. "This is the least we can do."
The Upper Makefield site is the only national cemetery in the region to host such memorials for the otherwise forgotten. But it reflects a national movement to recognize veterans who died without the military funeral they deserved - and whose cremated remains may be sitting on a shelf at a coroner's office or funeral home because they are unidentified or unclaimed.
That number could be as high as 47,000, according to the Missing in America Project, a California-based veterans group whose mission is to locate, identify, and inter the unclaimed cremains of deceased veterans.
John Fabry, a funeral director and Missing in America's Pennsylvania coordinator, said he helped bury the remains of 28 veterans last year whose ashes had been unclaimed at the Allegheny County Medical Examiner's Office.
"I had a situation where a house was being torn down, and workers found a box of cremains in a cupboard. It had a name and American flag on it, and turned out to be a veteran," said Fabry, of Fairchance, Pa., about 50 miles south of Pittsburgh.
Congress also has taken a role. This year, Rep. Bill Shuster (R., Pa.), and Sen. Pat Toomey (R., Pa.) introduced legislation to require the Department of Veterans Affairs to study the handling of unclaimed veterans' remains. That follows the Dignified Burial and Other Veterans' Benefits Improvement Act of 2012, which set aside resources to help facilitate the burial of deceased veterans with no known next of kin or no financial resources.
Communities are also doing their part.
In Wrightstown, the New Jersey-run Brig. Gen. William C. Doyle Veterans Memorial Cemetery hosts services for veterans whose remains had been unclaimed but later transferred to the cemetery.
New Jersey's Mission of Honor for Cremains of American Veterans has organized 22 ceremonies for 188 veterans whose remains were "orphaned and abandoned" at the Doyle cemetery - including some they have discovered had served in the Spanish-American War.
Confirming can be difficult. The most frustrating obstacles are privacy laws that limit the sharing of information, said Bob Arrington, president of the National Funeral Directors Association.
"The biggest challenge is just finding out if they are a veteran," said Arrington.
Washington Crossing National Cemetery has been a final destination for veterans' ashes since it opened in late 2009, just a few months before Weiner's husband, Harry, a World War II veteran, was buried there.
Marge Weiner was a volunteer in those early days and remembers when only four people would show up at the Unattended service.
In September, about 50 came to pay their respects. And at least once a year, a group of deceased veterans from Philadelphia is honored at Washington Crossing in a special service.
To prepare, Joyce McKeown, a veterans benefits coordinator with the Veterans Advisory Commission of Philadelphia, contacts the city Medical Examiner's Office for a list of unclaimed remains of men and women who could be veterans.
McKeown researches the names and contacts the National Cemetery Administration, which approves a veteran's status.
"We buried 21 veterans this year," McKeown said. Those names will be read aloud in Philadelphia during a Veterans Day ceremony Wednesday at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Washington Square.
On Sept. 24, the mourners began gathering at Washington Crossing for the Service for the Unattended around 1:30 p.m. on a sunny and warm day. In cars and motorcycles, they formed a procession outside the cemetery office and traveled slowly down the narrow, winding road to a spot dubbed Freedom Circle, where a flag flies at half-staff.
Some sat on benches, others stood. The group included students from Council Rock High School South, who began attending in the summer and were so moved by the ceremonies that they are lobbying school officials to keep coming back. Also there were members of Warriors' Watch Riders, a motorcycle group whose mission is to support and honor veterans.
The service typically remembers two or three veterans a month, but on that day the list had five names, with their rank and service branch - two from the Air Force, one Marine, one from the Army, and one from the Army Air Corps. Each name was read aloud - but without details about their lives, dates of service, or death.
"They served with honor, pride and courage," Gregory, the chaplain, said in a brief homily. Each then was honored with a three-gun salute, and a folded flag was handed to a volunteer designated as a stand-in for relatives.
Tony Fialkowski, 66, a Warriors' Watch member and Marine veteran who rides his Harley-Davidson to the ceremony every month, stood at attention through the service.
"We have an obligation to show respect," said Fialkowski, a retired operations manager from Doylestown. "No veteran should take their last ride alone."
610-313-8211